May 28 - July 4: Catching Up… What the Heck Happened to June?!?

July 4, 2016

Dear Maine,

Wow. Where do I even begin? You may have noticed that I’m something of a procrastinator, so I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. We’ve more or less fallen into a routine now that the CSA has started, but we are busy, we are tired, and we are… busy. Very busy.

And before I begin, I need to reveal something. I haven’t been completely myself with you; I’ve been censoring, and I don’t want to do that anymore. See, I am a Person Who Likes To Say “Fuck”, only I haven’t been saying “fuck” for fear of offending. Well, Maine, it’s like this: I speak freely, and you choose or choose not to be offended. So, fair warning: henceforth, you will be hearing the word “fuck”, and probably several other choice expletives as I, the author, see fit to use. 

Let’s see… we left off back on May 27, and the last thing I showed you was a picture of one of the lupines in front of the cabin coming into bloom. Well, those have now come and gone…

The last week of May and the first week of June were the last weeks we had without a rhythm, so here are the highlights.

On May 28, I went to market, and then Nate and I got some separate time in the afternoon. It was a really hot day, and I had been dying to check out Belfast, so that’s what I did.  On my drive down, I stopped at a gigantic garage sale, where I came away with all this for just one dollar:

We each have one plate, one bowl, one knife, one fork, one spoon, one mug and one glass apiece. Who needs more than that?!? Well, our previous bowls were quite small, so now we each have TWO bowls apiece. This is going to be luxurious. I got the mug because my other mug is a travel mug, and it doesn’t warm my hands because it’s insulated. I got the wooden bowl because I LOVE wooden bowls. The more unique, the better.

Then, the BEST thing happened: I found an awesome used book store, AND they had a great shelf of Stephen King books, all for $1.00 each. My collection is now in good shape! I only need a couple more that are near and dear to my heart, and then my quest to recreate my SK collection is complete.

The first thing I did in Belfast was find this cute little store of green things. I think it may actually be called The Green Store. Inside I managed to find a hat that doesn’t look stupid on me, at least in my opinion. You be the judge.

I also found a great little scrub brush for the cast iron pans.Turns out they should be scrubbed with a stiff brush and no soap, which is not what I had been doing. It is now. I like things that are all-natural, sustainably made and good for the planet. I really liked this store. And my hat was very reasonably priced, too!

Then I found this great little place where I got a Thai chicken wrap and an iced herbal tea. It was very tasty. I wish I could remember the name of it.

Belfast has this great little harbor trail for walking. I walked the whole thing. It starts at the boathouse

goes through the actual shipyard, then has this cool little pedestrian bridge across the Passagassawakeag River. Now, I know that you, Maine, know how to pronounce that. We folk From Away are inclined to say “PASS-uh-GAS-uh-WACKY-ag”. But no. No, that’s not how you pronounce it, now, is it? I spent practically my whole traverse of the bridge practicing… “Puh-SAW-guh-suh-WAH-keg… Puh-SAW-guh-suh-WAH-keg…” I must have seemed as crazy as the two mumbling homeless people I passed on my journey. I hung out on the other side of the river for a moment. (The harbor trail rather unceremoniously just kind of ends right there.) I couldn’t tell if it was sprinkling, or if I was getting sprayed from the river water crashing on the rocks. Either way, it felt really good. 

Here are some pictures from my walk:

That's the giant thing they use to lift boats out of the water. The trail goes through a very active shipyard.

I headed back across and encountered three rather interesting people from Bangor named Daniel, Jennifer, and Ellen. They don’t really like street crime, money-induced corruption, rules or government, so we had an interesting chat for a few minutes. It started because I noticed this

and thought to myself, “Hey! That’s a shipping container home! We thought about doing that! COOL!” They must have thought something similar, because that’s what started us talking. 

And while we were talking, the weather took an abrupt turn from super hot and sunny to windy and threatening to storm, and in a very uncharacteristic maneuver, I completely forgot to bring extra layers, and I’m always over-prepared, so I had no choice but to head home. I may or may not have stopped from some Gifford’s bubble gum ice cream on my way home. I will never tell. 

Oh. And today is Mittens’ birthday. We didn’t do anything special for her at all. After all, she’s a cat.

On Sunday (May 29), Nate and I headed up to the land to do some stuff. I did a lot of pruning of the red maples in the clearing, and we discovered another apple tree that’s in pretty bad shape, so we pruned that up:

Then I decided to do something with the clearing. It’s hard to say how we are ultimately going to get the clearing cleared, but I took a small section, raked all the dead wood into a pile and lit it on fire.

The idea is that this will do a few things. First, it will get the junk out of there. Next, it will put carbon into the soil, which is good, because plants need carbon. Third, it will entertain me, because I’ve been wanting to light things on fire lately. In fact, those stupid tent caterpillars are everywhere, and I can remember going around with someone in the back of the pickup with a torch, lighting all their nests on fire. So, actually, the first thing I did when I got to the land was light all the tent caterpillar nests I could find on fire with a butane torch. 

I think I enjoyed that a little too much, and then, coupled with all the burning I did in the clearing…

So, as for the clearing, I burned one pile and got two others ready for burning next time. I couldn’t help myself — I just kept adding to my fire. I think that’s human nature. Whenever there’s a fire, we are just compelled to keep adding stuff to it. I’m glad I was able to add to it, though, because it took me a while to get it going. For the longest time, I thought I was just going to have a bunch of smoke and small clusters of burned birch bark, but ultimately my patience paid off, and I had a delightful inferno. It took quite a bit of water to quench it.

We came back home, and then the horror happened. I felt so violated. It was awful. Anyway, while I was crawling around in the grass pruning all those red maples, I felt something on the back of my neck, and I brushed at it to get it to go away and then kind of forgot about it. But then I got home and there was THIS

attached to the back of my neck. Mother. F*cker! Nate rescued me from it (by removing it with tweezers. I’m not sure how I would have done that by myself, especially since I’m squeamish and don’t like squishing bugs), and then I did the heebie jeebie dance for a little while after peeling off all my clothes and thoroughly inspecting every bit of my body for more of the little bastards. We also checked Nate and both cats. Oh. I also lit the tick on fire, because that’s kind of my thing on this particular day.

The ticks are SO bad up here. What the hell? They are nasty, nasty creatures, and we hate them with a passion. What good are they? I may regret asking for this, but can we PLEASE have a very harsh winter this year to kill them off? I fume when I think about ticks. I fucking hate ticks. Hate them. Hate hate hate them. Want them all to die. Right now. 

So that was Sunday.

Monday, May 30, was Memorial Day. Yes, it’s a holiday, but it wasn’t a day off for us, and know what’s great about that? We didn’t care! It’s LOVELY to have a job where we don’t even care about the holidays, because we don’t look forward to having them off because we love doing the work that we do. Traditionally, Memorial Day marks a really big planting on the farm, and this year was no exception. We planted a bunch of vegetables and a bunch of flowers. This is what the truck looks like as it’s getting ready to take the baby plants to the field:

It’s just so much pretty greenness! Please don’t ask me what all those are; all I know is that they’re flowers of some sort. I do recognize a lot of calendulas.

And this was dinner:

Lilacs from the farm; salad from the farm; bread, dip, fiddleheads and meat from the Farmers’ Market, and soup from Hannaford BUT with fresh basil from the farm. This is a good way to eat.

Tuesday, June 1, was a day of weeding. There is SO much to weed, always. I really want to figure out this no-till farming thing. It seems that weeding is probably the biggest time consumer around here, and it’s utterly fruitless but utterly necessary. It’s quite laborious, but without it, things just aren’t good. Tiny weeds become big weeds, which take nutrients away from the desirous plants and which make it harder to harvest the plants we want. Weeding is a necessary evil, and I’d guess it’s the bane of most, if not all, plant farmers’ existence. Except for the successful no-till farmers, that is. I also got myself one heck of a sunburn, because I still haven’t accepted the weirdness of Maine weather. This is the only place I’ve ever been where the temperature changes by about 20 degrees in the space of half an hour. The nice thing is that if I’m cold, I won’t be for long, and if I’m warm… I won’t be for long. Winter should be interesting.

So this afternoon Nate and I were done with chores and had just moved the Golden Comets to their new patch of grass. We were doing stuff over by the well when suddenly we saw some movement over by their pen. We had neglected to pull the dolly out from under their enclosure, and we had left just enough of a gap for some adventurous chickens to slip their way under the edge! As we approached, one by one, they were coming out, single file. We fixed that in a hurry to staunch the flow of chickens, but once the escapees realized what they had done, all they wanted to do was get back in! We gladly helped them in that endeavor. They weren’t too hard to catch, and thankfully we realized what had happened after there were only a handful of escapees. I can’t imagine corralling fifty or so of those birds. That was close!

I also think today (poor memory and bad notes!) was the day I went crazy with the weedwhacker and created a front lawn for our cabin. I was tired of the overgrowth. My notes only say “lawn”, which is pretty non-specific, but, just so you know, if not today, on some day or other, I went crazy with the weedwhacker and made us a lawn, cleared a path to the picnic table, and made it so I don’t get wet ankles every time I go to the outhouse. Weedwhacking is one of those addictive-type activities.

Wednesday, June 2, was a game-changing type day. It started off normal, with just some planting, some greenhouse work, and some tomato pruning, which, by the way, I enjoy, except for the tomatoes insisting on staining my fingers black — which doesn’t really wash off so much. There was a MOFGA event this evening at the Cosmic Goat Dairy in Litchfield. I had really wanted to go, but Nate didn't want to go so much, so we weren’t going to go until Beth said, “Hey, isn’t there a thing tonight? You should go.” It’s funny how things work. I had really wanted to go because of my obsession with goats, and the goat part was cool. (See?)

But what was even cooler was when the presentation was over and we got to wander the homestead. It was hands-down, THE coolest, THE most magical, THE most inspiring place I have ever been. I can’t even describe it! It took Janet and Brian, who happens to be a very prestigious and talented architect who does a lot of work with sustainable, energy efficient construction, forty years to create it, but it was raw land when they began, and I was just so inspired! 

I didn’t take many pictures because I felt weird taking pictures of someone else’s home and because I was just like, whoa, and I wanted to be fully THERE, not recording everything. It was just SO cool!! There are all these interconnected buildings and seemingly secret passageways and ways you can go upstairs then end up back outside and then come back into the kitchen, and just… I don’t know. The well actually pumps directly into the kitchen sink, and there’s a trapdoor in the kitchen floor with stone steps down to the actual well, and there’s a wood-fired hot tub, and there are all these outbuildings and steps that are inspired by some place in Africa and all these magical fairy gardens and beautiful stone work and paths that go into the woods and cool stone bridges and an amazing outhouse and a screened-in gazebo that’s raised way off the ground with this awesome walkway out to it and, and, and… I think my brain was like an old typewriter when you hit all the keys at once. 

And then there’s Janet. I want to be Janet when I’m her age. She’s got so much energy and so many stories and ideas and… Wahh! I feel like my head is going to explode just thinking about it.

And know what? It’s all off-grid. Every single last bit of it.  Wow.  Just wow.

AND… then there’s the home that the other people, the goat people, built. It’s modern construction, but it’s super cool! It’s heated by a centralized masonry fireplace, and it has 12-inch walls. I bet that place is warm in the winter. 

I just love the way things are done around here.

Anyway, I had been stagnating, but this was just the magic and inspiration I needed. 

So inspired was I that I did some cool stuff on Thursday, June 2. But I will get to that. First, Beth, Dennis and Jane took off for New York City for a wedding Thursday morning, essentially leaving us in charge of the farm. They told us that something usually dies while they’re gone, but that didn’t happen today (we’ll get to that).  Anyway, we were doing chores as they were getting ready to leave, and I was walking to the chickens and talking with Jane, and then Jane and I went in separate directions, with Jane heading back to the house, and then I heard her yell, “Hey!”, so I stopped and turned around, and she ran up to me and gave me a big hug and then headed on her way. It was so sweet!

We spent our morning planting parsley and magenta spreen (a tasty variety of lamb’s quarters), then we mulched some paths between some vegetable beds to keep the weeds down, then I did some greenhouse work for Joe, who is also gone for the weekend. He went to Comicon (I think it’s called) in Arizona for a few days.

Then I got adventurous. I went to the land all by myself, which is kind of a big deal. Actually, first I went to the library, because I needed internet to update all my electronics and to print some stuff (I never thought I would miss having a printer, but I miss having a printer), and then I had a bunch of shopping to do. I bought a lilac to plant next to the compost pile, and I bought a honeysuckle, too, because it also smells good. It will probably go on the other side of the compost pile, which does not smell so good. I had a whole list of things to accomplish, like going to the military supply store (which is always fun), getting more yogurt starter downtown at the Central Street Farmhouse, and getting a few things at the Natural Living Center and this horrible  (but still seemingly inescapable for the time being, given our current circumstances) place where the prices are low (but the cost is high), and by the time I did all these things, it was really pretty late. I had been meaning to stop at Becky’s, which is in Glenburn on the way to the land, primarily because they’re putting in a FamilyDollarGeneralStore or whatever it’s called (stupid bit of commercialism and shitty Chinese products. It’s officially boycotted, and it’s not even open. Why do these shoddy institutions come into places even as rural as Glenburn frickin Maine and ruin everything?!?). Well, turns out Becky’s isn’t so much a general store as it is a delicious eatery with pizzas, subs and the like. I got the bacon cheeseburger sub, oven toasted, and um, yum. Nope, not nutritious. Not at all. But SO good. I couldn’t believe it, but I ate the whole thing. Sitting in my car on the land around 7:00 p.m., because that’s when I finally made it there. I thought about not even staying because it was getting dark (yeah, in, like, two hours!) and because I couldn’t figure out how to open the stupid shipping container (no, not brute force; finesse, and a little common sense — and that’s how it’s closed, too), and because, well, as I learned after freaking myself out completely, I am a big, giant sissy pants. 

So I forced myself to walk the Pioneer Trial, which, in retrospect, was probably not the best idea without some sort of personal protection in the form of a firearm, sharp pointy stick or can of bear spray — don’t worry; it all ends well. My first wildlife encounter was a rabbit that I frightened, which ran away. I got to the stream and stood there for a bit, checking myself obsessively for ticks (there were none) and then just standing still, listening and observing. Then I realized I was mostly doing that because I was scared to do anything else, so I crossed the stream, and I heard something make a big splash in a little puddle a few feet away. After my heart rate dropped back below 200 and my feet landed back on the ground, I decided to check it out, and I found this:

So now we know: our water ecosystem contains fish. Not sure what kind of fish or what they were doing in that totally insufficient little pool of water, but fish nonetheless. Fish: check.

Then I wandered onto the beaver dam and stood on that for a bit, surveying the marsh. As I was just kind of taking it all in, I saw some movement in the water, probably 50 yards out. Then I realized the movement was headed in my directed. Then I realized I was looking at a little brown head sticking up out of the water and swimming directly toward me in a rather rapid zig zag pattern. 

And I was like, “Ooh! A beaver!! Yay!!” But then the beaver kept coming toward me in its seemingly increasingly faster zig zag pattern. And I was like, “Holy fuck! Seriously. A beaver! A really fast beaver…and this is his territory… and I’m standing on a dam made of sharp, pointy sticks… and I have no egress… “  And then I started thinking about that guy who said to me the other day, completely out of nowhere, “You gotta watch out for them beavers. They bite.” And then all I could think about was the movie Zombeavers, which I haven’t even seen, and then I was like, “Well, shit.” I could tell the beaver was trying to figure out what in the world I was, and it was moving directly toward me very, very fast, kind of like a furry, buck-toothed torpedo, in fact.  So, I very bravely squeaked out a greeting. “Hey, b-b-b-beaver…” I think that offended it. It gave me a decidedly indignant look, quickly turned its back to me and disappeared under the water, but not before it took it’s big, wide paddle tale and made a resounding slap against the water’s surface. It made a CRACK that sounded quite a bit like a gunshot. Well, I clumsily high-tailed it off that beaver dam and clambered onto the biggest rock I could find nearby (because I’m pretty sure beavers can’t climb rocks) until I was pretty sure the beaver was gone. At least gone-ish. 

So, once my heart rate dropped back below 300, I decided to move on. After chastising myself for being a big fraidy-cat, I determined that I couldn’t run away defeated, and it was time to face my fears. 

So the woods are a lovely place… unless you’ve just had the wits scared out of you by a beaver and you’re all by yourself, having visions that 36 acres of relatively open forest have somehow turned into a million acres of untouched wilderness full of bears and moose and… beavers. And, let’s take a moment to talk about the marsh. I have an irrational fear of marshes and swamps. I’m convinced that something really, really bad happened to me in a bog or something in a past life, but, regardless, I find them to be very scary places. So I wandered away from the marsh, but then found myself drawn right back into it. I was kind of curious as to whether or not the beaver was tracking my northward progress, so I had to go to the water’s edge just one more time, up in the very corner of the property, and nope. No beaver. 

I think we’ll call it a draw.

But then I was in the corner, and I wanted to go back to the car and back to “safety”, but I also wanted to stop being such a baby. So I crept along the treeline, investigating ferns to see if I could figure out if we have the ones from which we could get edible fiddleheads (verdict: I don’t know if we do or if we don’t). Every sound I heard was certainly a moose (or a beaver), and every step I took had to be taking me deeper into the wilderness, and then I realized how ridiculous I was being, so I just stopped every so often and observed. Just stood silently and listened. Then looked. Then crouched down low and looked. Then looked up high. Then looked down low. Just looked. That made things a lot less scary.

But then it really was starting to get dark, and I don’t know what’s up with me and ill-preparedness lately (SO unlike me!), but I was flashlight-less, so I really did head back to the car — slowly, continuing to observe as I went. I rustled up a few birds, and when you go slowly instead of crashing through the undergrowth like an apex predator on a mission, you can practically step on them before you even know they’re there, so non-threatening you are perceived to be. Pretty neat.

I went to say hello to my favorite tree, my birch. I love touching her. I feel her energy thrum under her bark.

My hands are always this dirty now. I’m pretty sure it’s so ground in that they’ll never come clean. I’m okay with that.

I headed back, got home way past my bedtime (I got home at like, 9:00), showed Nate all my pictures and purchases and went to bed renewed. I had really been stagnating, but between yesterday’s magic and today’s wild adventure, I feel renewed.

We all need that every now and again, so this is my advice: if you’re stagnating, go stir shit up. Go harass a beaver. Go climb a mountain. Go crouch in the middle of a patch of ferns. You can never go wrong when you change your perspective.

Friday morning, June 3, found us in charge of the farm still, and today was the day that something died. It rained in the morning, but we still have to harvest for market, regardless of the weather. It wasn’t so bad. Then we wash everything, and the tatsoi needed to be harvested in its entirety, so we cleaned and boxed a lot of tatsoi. Next, we installed some drip tape and some landscape fabric in the greenhouse, and then broke for lunch.

In the afternoon we staked the tomatoes so they can be trellised, then we planted basil, and at some point we noticed what died during Beth & Dennis’ absence: thankfully, it was just a truck tire. It went flat, but Nate has a puncture repair kit, so he pulled out the offending nail or screw or whatever, and then it was good as new.

We went to the pizza shop for dinner, and I had always wanted to sit in the nook. There’s one booth that’s next to the Ms. Pacman (yes, that’s right) machine and the reading chair and the bookshelf. And then I noticed that the books on the shelf are for sale. And then I noticed that there were several by Stephen King. And then I noticed that there were even more by Tom Robbins. And then I decided that today was the best day of my life. And Larry, the pizza shop owner guy, got excited because I was buying all his books and he now knew someone else who loves to read, and then his partner, Desiree, started talking with us and put it together that we are the Fisher Farm apprentices, and turns out, they are CSA members and come to the farm fairly often, which is super neat. My gluten free pizza with goat cheese and walnuts and olives and other stuff (can’t remember the name of the pizza!) was awesome!

Saturday, June 4, brought another day at market, which is always enjoyable. It’s also the anniversary of the day I graduated from high school. We won’t talk about how many years ago that was.

Since we are responsible for the farm, we didn’t want to leave it unattended, at least not for long, so we went to Hannaford, got ourselves a couple Redbox movies (the solar system easily supports the computer, which, being a Mac, has an external DVD drive, which plays movies just fine) and went to bed early.

Sunday, June 5 really wasn’t much different. We again didn’t want to go very far, so we spent most of our day reading — I read some cool stuff on organic pest management and no-till farming. I also got caught up on my Nat Geos — and we watched our other Redbox movie. I kind of like days like today. We don’t seem to take the time to have very many of them.

I’m not sure what got into Mittens during lunch, but she was completely out of control. (Our pair of six-year-olds: Willow and Mittens.) So Mittens had to go into time out until she could calm herself. This is what time out looks like:

And the lupines are coming along nicely. I really like them.

These are the ones directly in front of our cabin.

Monday, June 6 was a very exciting day, because Nate and I were literally in charge of everything, and we didn’t break anything at all. Lauryn had done the Bar Harbor market on Sunday since Joe is out of town, so she took today off. 

Nate and I started by putting some floating row cover on some of the beds, then we did a whole lot of seeding in the greenhouse. We took a short lunch, then moved the leftover straw mulch piles from the edges of the perennial beds into the paths near the clematis. That didn’t take long, and we had then literally done everything on the list except for a few things for Joe that we couldn’t do because we couldn’t read them. So Nate did some weed whacking and some other stuff, and I got myself onto the lawnmower, and I mowed just about everything on the east half of the farm. I mowed around Jane’s play area, and I mowed most of the edges of most of the fields. I even ran the mower out of gas. But it was something to keep me occupied, and, like the weedwhacker, it’s fun and kind of addicting.

We took a shorter lunch so we could leave early to go meet with the Bradford Code Enforcement Officer to figure out some stuff about the land and building and such. We were going to take my car, but we got to Hampden and had to turn around because it started skipping. It didn’t want to idle properly, so we brought it home and grabbed the truck instead. My car has been so awesome and so reliable, so I hope this isn’t anything serious. Or expensive. 

We got to Bradford later than we wanted to, but it worked out just fine. Mike, the Code Enforcement Officer, was so happy that we came to him first and asked questions instead of just doing stuff and trying to fly under the radar. He was super helpful. He gave us names and suggestions, and I feel like we’ve really made an ally in our endeavor. It’s like he wants us to succeed and be happy! I think this will be a good thing.

We went to the land after our meeting, and we didn’t stay long because it was pretty late. We did, however, check out the land briefly, just long enough to walk the Pioneer Trail and to encounter our friend, the beaver, who did his thing again, this time with Nate present.

I have a feeling this is going to be a long, complicated relationship.

Tuesday, June 7, found everybody back from their respective trips, and from here on out, Maine, my letters to you will be different, because we now have a rhythm and a structured schedule to what we do.

For starters, we now start work at 7:00 rather than 7:30, which is fine, since we are awake by 5:00 anyway.

Today was super, super rainy. We harvested flowers in the morning, which required the washing of a lot of buckets, and I mean really washing them, like they’re dishes that are going to be eaten from, because flowers like things very clean. Any sort of dirt, bacteria or plant debris in their water makes them very unhappy and they don’t last as long.  At one point it rained enough that I scooted inside for my rain coat, but that wasn’t enough, so I actually had to seek shelter in the hoop house until things passed.

Lunch remained rainy, and the afternoon got even rainier.  A thunderstorm came through while Joe and I were planting flowers in the mud (the kind of mud that sucks your boots off if you’re not careful), so we had to take a break to seek shelter in the barn. I learned these things: 1. When it’s muddy, don’t try to plant with a trowel. The mud just sticks to it. Just use your hands; and 2. A hoop house is a very safe place to be during an electrical storm as long as you’re not touching any part of the hoop house. It acts like a giant Faraday cage.

After planting, we weeded the hoop houses, because those were dry. You can’t weed when it’s wet. Mud just sticks to the weeding tools, and you can’t really rip the plants out of the wet soil, and even if you can, their roots aren’t being desiccated in the sun, so it’s kind of pointless. Weeding is best done on a hot, sunny, dry day. Which is, of course, exactly the conditions in which everybody wants to weed. Who wouldn’t? But it’s not about the humans; it’s about the plants.

Nate had a chance to work on the car a bit, and who knows what the problem is? The spark plugs were very dirty, so he cleaned those, and it ran okay, so we’ll see how it goes.

Well, Maine, that’s the last day for which I took any notes, and that’s because the rhythm has begun. What’ll be happening now is that I will set out the schedule for you, and the rest of my correspondence will pretty much be highlights and unusual occurrences.

So here’s the schedule:

Every morning still starts with chores, which consists of opening up the hoop houses and rolling up the sides (we are now leaving the greenhouse open all the time, because really the only thing we are seeding is lettuce, and that likes it cooler for germination anyway) and taking care of the animals. That usually ends by about 7:20, and then the day’s activities begin.  

On Monday, Wednesday and Saturday mornings, we harvest flowers. Someone named Donna often comes to help. Harvesting flowers is relaxing, but it can get a little monotonous, although as summer progresses and more things come into bloom, it gets more interesting. At this point, I’m pretty much over delphiniums and other blue, spiky things, which is great, because they’re also over. So, first we scrub the buckets super clean (about 12-18 of them), then we pick the flowers into the buckets and take them straight back to the cooler. We usually have them picked by about 9:00, and then we go back to the packing shed and get them all out and set up to make bouquets. Depending on the day, we usually make between 40 and 50 for CSA, and on Saturdays, we make about 30 larger bouquets for the Bar Harbor market. Bouquets are always finished by lunchtime, and sometimes we are done earlier, which frees us up for other stuff.

Lettuce gets seeded every other Monday, and sometimes there will be other things to seed as well, depending on where we are in the season.

Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons are what I think of as “whatever” time. This is when things get transplanted, weeded, mowed, thinned, pruned, mulched, trained, trellised, or whatever else they need. This is when other projects get done.

Wednesday afternoon is Lauryn’s afternoon off, because she does stuff on Thursday afternoon. I’ll get to that.

Tuesday and Thursday mornings we harvest and wash for CSA. Tuesday mornings we usually finish up just in time, then after lunch we set things up for CSA members to come pick up. On Tuesdays, CSA members pick up at the farm between 3:00 and 6:00, and then we have farm dinner. Rose makes dinner for all of us. CSA pick up started on June 14. Some folks pick up every week, and some folks pick up every other week.

Farm dinner is delicious, by the way. Rose is an excellent cook, and Joe, who is also an excellent cook, often makes stuff too.

So Tuesday afternoons are usually pretty fun and relaxed, because people are wandering around the farm, and we have to make sure that CSA pick up goes well. Sometimes we will do tasks if we don’t want to hang out at the packing shed. Like tomorrow, I will probably finish thinning the carrots that I didn’t finish this morning.

Thursday mornings get a little hectic because not only does the CSA stuff have to be harvested and washed; it also has to be boxed up. Once it’s boxed, Lauryn takes it into Bangor to the three pick up locations. I’m not sure what she does there; all I know is that she leaves with all the boxes in the truck, leaves her car here, then comes back with the truck in the morning. Thursday afternoons are still our afternoons off.

It’s pretty cool that every CSA share comes with a bouquet. The flowers here are so beautiful!

Then Saturday morning is the Bangor market, which Nate did for the month of June and Lauryn is doing for the month of July. I’m happy that I get to do it for August! Whoever doesn’t do market harvests and washes vegetables and/or harvest flowers and make bouquets for the Bar Harbor market on Sunday morning, which Joe does.

So here’s the recap: Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday mornings: harvest flowers and make bouquets; Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings: harvest and wash vegetables for CSA or market; Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons: “whatever” time; Tuesday afternoon: CSA pickup at the farm; Thursday afternoon: CSA pickup in Bangor (just Lauryn; we have the afternoon off); Saturday morning: Farmers’ Market in Bangor; Sunday morning: Bar Harbor Farmers’ Market (Joe only); Thursday afternoon, Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday are our times off. 

So that’s that, and now here are some highlights from the last month or so:

On Wednesday, June 8, the chickens got closed into their coop and moved to a new location, which is much closer to the barn and the house. This isn’t a great picture, but here they are being moved:

That day also felt like a punishment to me, because I spent all day on my hands and knees weeding the perennial garden all by myself, which, albeit a necessary activity, is an exercise in frustration. It’s okay, though; weeding really allows me to work through any sort of anger or negative emotions I have. Weeding on hands and knees has always been therapeutic like that for me. On this particular day, I think it may have created more anger than it worked through. Don’t get me wrong: it wasn’t torture and I didn’t feel forced or enslaved, but it’s the only day I’ve had on the farm that I really didn’t like. I think that’s a pretty great track record: in two and a half months of working, there’s been one day I didn’t like, and on a scale of one to ten, one being “I want to work here for the rest of my life!” and ten being “Screw this! I quit!”, it was like a six. I’d say that’s alright.

On Thursday, June 9, we went to our land, and surprisingly didn’t overdo it. We planted the lilac.

We cleared some more paths and chopped up some more fallen trees and created a “boat launch” (we have no boat) near the marsh. The beaver thought that was pretty interesting. We have an uncomfortable detente, the beaver and us. I’ve taken to thinking of it as a scape-beaver. I blame it for everything that goes wrong on the property. For instance, something got into the compost, and I found an eggshell out by the marsh, so I just blamed the beaver. It felt right.

We have some cool plants on the land, too.

See?

And around that time, the lupines were just about in their prime:

Who wouldn’t want to live here?

This is from June 11. This is what it looks like when we start making bouquets. We just choose from the various buckets and create our masterpieces. At first we put the buckets on the floor.  Now we’re all fancy and put them on planks set up on crates so we don’t have to bend over as far.

Nate and I had a little adventure. We actually left you, Maine. Nate’s cousin, Connor, had a housewarming party/got married unexpectedly on Saturday, June 11. Lauryn did market that day so that we could end at 10:30 and leave by 11:00. We took the long, no-toll route through western Maine and northern New Hampshire. We got there (Connor’s place in Chester, Vermont) around 5:00, only to learn that things really ended at 5:00 and they got married at like 2:00. Oh well. My stomach was really hurting (probably from dinner the night before. See below.), and though we were invited to stay, all I wanted was a hotel. For my birthday, all I wanted was a bath, and I decided I would have it a little early. We left around 8:00, and it was stupidly hard to find a decent hotel. We ended up at the Econolodge in Brattleboro, which was $99 and totally not worth it, as we couldn’t connect to their Wifi, and our bathtub came complete with a bloody washcloth and a shower curtain that was stained with what I’m telling myself was red wine but was probably vomit. And this is me totally UNrecommending this place. Oh, they were superficially apologetic about the biohazard they left in the bathroom, but they didn’t do anything to offer to make it right, so I would say don’t give these folks your money. $99. Sheesh. For that outdated place, which only had one tissue in the box, I might add, it shouldn’t have cost more than $39. However, considering how filthy we usually are, and having gingerly moved the offending items out of the bathing space and having personally cleaned the bathing space, it was adequate (though just barely) for the damn bath I had been wanting. You know, in retrospect, I STILL want a bath for my birthday. I’ve just now decided that one didn’t count.

Anyway, it was nice to see Nate’s dad and grandparents again and to get to meet and/or chat with some other members of his family. It’s nice to have a bit of the familiar. 

And, we were both so excited that there were two beds in our hotel room! Not how couples normally act when they get a hotel room, but we were each soooo happy to have our own beds! I sprawled out like a starfish and slept like a hibernating bear. 

We even watched a little TV in the morning and didn’t clear out until the absolute last minute, which is the thing to do when you pay way too much for a shitty hotel. I very much enjoyed taking a long, hot bath and a long, hot shower in the same 16-hour period. 

I kind of miss modern plumbing.

But not enough to go back!

Anyway, backing up, we had a farm potluck on Friday night (June 10) so we could hear about Beth, Dennis & Jane’s trip to New York. It was awesome. Everything was delicious, and some new people came — Larry (from the pizza shop) and Ken. My stomach had been screwy lately (I know why: too much gluten and too much sugar, not enough probiotics!), and something I got into, which was probably not anything to do with the “something” itself, but rather just my sensitive system’s reaction to it, caused me extraordinary digestive distress. At a couple points I thought I was going to die (yes, I am grossly exaggerating), and at other points, I sincerely wished that I just would (no, I am not exaggerating at all). The good news is that whatever went wrong was all resolved by Sunday morning, and I have started avoiding the grain and the sugar again and upping my probiotic intake, so I’ve been right as rain ever since.

See, this is what happens when you clean up your diet from its formerly horrible, all-grain, all-sugar, all-processed version. I am now just super sensitive to that garbage. Unfortunately, my will power isn’t great, and if there’s a homemade blueberry muffin in front of me, I’m going to have a bite. Thankfully, my will power is usually strong enough that I don’t eat the whole thing… unless we’re talking about cookies, then it’s a whole other ball game. But I digress.

So, we drove back from Vermont and made a stop a Reny’s Department Store in Saco, because I’ve heard so many good things about this Maine institution. It was awesome!! I got a Maine hoodie, which I love because it’s so comfy, and because, Maine, this is the first place I have ever actually lived where I want to have clothing that sports it’s name. Maine, you really are that great a place! I can’t wait to wear my hoodie out of state! I got a few other things as well, including a jigsaw puzzle, some Dinosaur Barbecue sauce, another set of sheets for the bed and a pair of pants exclusively for the land (they’re light-colored to show ticks and are perfectly suitable for dousing in Permethrin). We drove up the coast and checked out Old Orchard Beach, which didn’t look like much, because most of the coast is ruined by private homes, an alarming number of which are for sale (that’s what people get for making theirs the best possible land, which really should belong to all of us, not just the privileged few). And I guess beach season is not quite in full swing anyway.

So I hated the hotel (and let you know it), but I LOVED the restaurant we ate at in Old Orchard Beach! It was called the Bua Thai Restaurant, and it was delicious! Seriously the best pad thai I have ever had. The service was great and the prices were reasonable. I highly recommend it!  

We thought about heading back up the coast, but that would have taken too long, so we just got on the highway, because we were tired of being in the vehicle. And we had to take the truck, since my car is being weird. Aside from getting caught in a snarl of slow traffic making its way past the place where a car had inexplicably ended up upside down on the other side of the guide rail, our trip home was uneventful. Excursion complete.

As I mentioned, June 14 was our first CSA pickup at the farm. It looks like this:

You start at the left and move around the horseshoe. Each station has instructions as to how many of each to take. This was our first share, so it’s not huge. The last two weeks have been more exciting, largely thanks to the strawberries, because who doesn’t love those? (Aside: yes, it is possible to get sick of strawberries, and it is certainly possible to get sick of picking them. It’s time consuming! I never thought I would say this, but I’m glad strawberry season is over.) And now there are snap peas. Um, yum!

On June 15, something interesting happened. The day was normal, but as I was walking back from my shower, some movement on the ground caught my eye, so I crouched down for a better look. What I found was a wasp apparently attacking a caterpillar. This was fascinating! The wasp was riding the caterpillar like a cowboy on a bronco, and the caterpillar was putting up pretty good resistance. Then I noticed that the wasp was biting into the back of the caterpillar’s neck (yes, I know caterpillars don't have necks, but if they did, that would be where this one was being bitten). It appeared that the caterpillar was still alive… but then this… maggot crawled out of the hole the wasp was making, and I was like, “What the fuck?!?”

Here’s the video of the bronco-riding part, but then I stopped recording it because I didn’t know there was going to be a recreation of that scene from Alien.

Here’s a video of the maggot crawling away.

Weird, right?

At about this time, Dennis came out of the house and gave me an incredibly strange look, so I said, “C’mere”, and he did, and crouched down with me. Then Nate came along after his shower, and then there we were, all three of us, observing this strange scene on the ground. Did the wasp put the maggot into the caterpillar? Was the wasp trying to get the caterpillar out of the wasp? Do all such caterpillars contain maggots? Can you (or anyone else; that’s what the “comments” section is for…) explain this to me, Maine? It’s one of the most bizarre nature things I have ever seen.

Thursday, June 16 was a pretty exciting day. We had our site evaluation by Dick Babine. Okay, so. Here in Maine, there are no perc tests. There’s a soil evaluator who comes along, digs some holes, checks some elevations, and gives you a plan for your wastewater disposal. (It may be slightly more complex than that.) This was such a cool process! Dick is a cool dude! He even let me help him a little bit. See?

The good news is that we have very well-drained soil, and we are all set to put in a pit privy and a greywater leach field. The home-building process begins! We need to get the report from Dick, then we can apply for the permit.

June 17 was an exciting farm day, because it was the day the Golden Comets got integrated with the Americanas and the Barred Rocks. I was afraid there would be carnage (Dennis may have led me to believe that by putting the chickens together, Nate and I were fomenting Armageddon), but things were okay. We watched them for a while, and there was one ballsy Rock who came into Comet territory, and there was one cheeky Comet who repeatedly made forays into Rock/Americana territory, at one point even running over and stomping on a Rock who had been lying down — it’s almost as if she was dared to do it! 

I took this picture, thinking it may be the last time I would ever see the Comets alive.

But, ultimately, it all went well, and now they all live happily together. If I knew how to insert audio files, this is where I would put “Happy Together” by The Turtles. Please sing that in your head as you look at the next photo:

Around this time, I noticed this very pathetic, tiny paper sign in Rose’s front yard that said, “Please drive slowly”. We hoped it was for CSA members and not for us (I confirmed that it was for CSA members and not for us), but I really wanted to improve upon it. So I scrounged some scrap wood and some paint, and I got down to business. Maybe it’s because I had had “Happy Together” in my head since integrating the chickens, or maybe it’s because this is a flower farm, and without knowing for sure, I think maybe Rose and Jerry just might have been hippies at some point, or maybe it’s because I wish I had been a hippie in the 1960s, but I really wanted to make the sign with a 60s flower theme and psychedelic font. It took me a really long time to make it, just because I could only work on it here and there (I also had to practice spinning yarn — Beth gave me a lesson around this time, but I kind of really, really suck at it, and clearly need more lessons — and I had to work on my bathouses [more on that later]), but here’s my finished product. Please feel free to keep singing “Happy Together” as you admire my handiwork.

On June 19, we decided to go to the beach. So, we had that really big rain back on June 8 or so, remember? Well, nothing since. And it’s been hot. (Though I am pleased to report that it rarely remains about 60 overnight, so there havent’ been any of those stupid, humid, sultry nights that I so hated back in New York. I totally dig the way you do diurnal warming, Maine.) So who wouldn't want to go to the beach, right?

We went to the beach in Castine that Lauryn recommended… and maybe we got there too early, but it was cold. And windy. Not quite what we expected. We wandered around for about 15 minutes, then moved on to Plan B, which we really didn't quite have, so we just drove. Oh. By the way, my car seems to be operating properly now with its clean spark plugs. Let’s hope it lasts. Here’s the Castine beach. We stayed long enough to snap a couple pictures and collect a couple snail shells.

We found a lighthouse, but since it’s basically attached to a private home, it wasn’t very exciting. It was actually pretty disappointing.

Then we happened upon Sandy Point Beach in Stockton Springs. Close to home — check. Not many people — check. Sandy — sort of check. It would do. So we set ourselves up a nice little spot and got some sun.  

It’s very confusing around here, Maine, as to what is actually ocean. Were we at the ocean? Because we could see land across from us. Is this the mouth of the river? Is it a bay? What is it? No offense, but your water is very cold, so I only put my toes in, so I’m not even sure if it’s fresh, salt or brackish water. In so many ways, Maine, you defy definition. But here’s Nate with his hair blowing in the wind.

And here are our feet.

I guess you could call that stuff sand. It's about as close as you can get around here.

And a long afternoon in the hot sun made Nate a tired boy, so when we came back, he napped. I have no explanation as to why Mittens is so tired, but it’s still cute.

On June 20, I took some pictures of bouquets all made up for CSA members, since I realized I never did that and only took pictures of the buckets of flowers pre-bouquet.

It's funny, looking back. Those were all blue and spiky, and now there are so many more flowers!

On June 20, I also commenced work on my afore-mentioned bathouses. (I wish that Apple would recognize that a bathouse is a thing and is not a bathhouse!!) I had ordered a book that I wasn’t expecting till July, but it came early. It’s all about bats and why we should build bathouses, and it comes with very specific instructions. So I got all my materials, and I spent some time on this day marking out my boards and plywood for cutting. See?

I also took this picture of the pretty flowers that I walk by in the field on my way to feed the sheep.

And strawberry shortcake from our second post-CSA farm dinner on June 21.

And (because why not?) a little Neapolitan ice cream to go along with that strawberry shortcake.

How’s that for a farmer’s tan?

On June 22, we went to another MOFGA training, this one in Dover-Foxcroft on a homestead. The topic was forest conservation. It was interesting, and we learned a lot about what resources are out there to help come up with a forest conservation plan and to provide some financial assistance for it. This one wasn’t just for apprentices, and we met some really interesting and like-minded people. It only lasted till 3:00, so we planned to go hiking afterward, but you, Maine, planned to dump a lot of rain on the area, so we cut our hike short (and maybe we also cut it a little short because some of us — we won’t say who — have sore, injured bodies and aren’t quite up for hiking right now). Anyway, we went here:

We were going to go all the way to the summit, but instead we made it to here:

where we saw this:

and photographically documented our presence:

It was starting to get slippery at that point, so we headed back down to the car. Our bodies were grateful. I did, however, find the hike invigorating, and it had been so long since I had hiked at all that I had forgotten how much I enjoy hiking. Nate and I have agreed that we will go back and hike the whole thing soon. It’s not too far from our land.

I almost forgot! There was this cool covered bridge on the way there, and you can actually drive across it!

Of course, not much of that much-needed rain fell on the farm. I’m not sure how Nate and I do it, but we seem to manage to live in places that stormy weather goes around instead of passes over. I hope this isn’t the case with Bradford.

Speaking of Bradford, on June 23, we met Dick on the land so he could give us our site plan. We are now all set to get the permit! We also started work on our first real structure on the land: the woodshed. We got the basic frame about half done. We concreted in four of the six posts. Here’s some of the process:

We again, very smartly, didn’t overdo it, and didn’t stay too late. We kind of like this whole not trying to do everything at once thing.

June 24 brought some new creatures to the farm. Look how cute they are!

There are six ducks and eight turkeys, and they are so cute!

Nate took these carrots at market on June 25:

On that same date, I made this particularly lovely bouquet (which pales in comparison to even lovelier bouquets I have made since. I was a total amateur when I made this one):

Those sexy legs in the background belong to Jerry.

On June 26, we went back to the beach. We didn’t bother with Castine this time; we just went straight to Sandy Point. The tide was out, so there was a lot more beach this time.  This time, we hiked the trails in the park. One of them lets out on the beach, so we wandered back down the beach instead of through the woods to the car. Most of the paths through the woods go over swampiness, so they look like this:

There’s a nice little overlook there, too.

With the tide out, it looked like there would be lots more nice beach.

…but not so much. It was a bit mucky.

It was actually too hot to be on the beach, so we didn’t stay long. I like this whole coming home early from things and relaxing. It works for me.

So. As you know by now, my birthday is June 30. I wanted my favorite French meals for my birthday, but I had to make them earlier, which meant that June 26 was my culinary masterpiece day. I have always loved saumon à l’oseille, but I had never encountered fresh oseille (sorrel) until I came to this farm. So, I made a delicious salmon in a sorrel cream sauce, along with a gratin dauphinois, which is an au gratin potato dish made traditionally made with gruyère. I modified since this isn’t France, but it was all delicious. I also used the Dutch oven for the first time to make the gratin. It worked really well.

I kind of long for the day that I can have dinner without a cat sitting on the bed right next to me at table height and occasionally sticking a paw into my plate or a face into my cup. 

More highlights…

On June 27, morning chores took a morbid twist:

I did as I was told.

I lovingly dug that hole with my bare hands. Poor little guy. May he rest in peace.

But hold on, because death is becoming a theme! Just wait! But first, a little life.

Nate and I (but mostly Nate) have taken to catching the Comets and holding them. It’s kind of fun. They don’t seem to hate it too much.

This evening, Nate ran up to Bradford with our permit application, and it’s approved, so now, effective June 27, 2016, we now have permission (and two years) to build our home!! And I am SO happy that it’s not that complicated an ordeal (from a paperwork perspective, anyway). Maine, your libertarian leanings really make me happy!

So, at Fisher Farm, they do birthdays right! June 28 became my substitute birthday so that we could have a party (my birthday fell on a Thursday, so that wouldn’t have worked out so well) with farm dinner. It was awesome! Rose got mad at Jerry for ruining a small surprise, but I’m glad he did, because it was absolutely priceless to see him come walking up the driveway wearing his ski goggles (which he’s started doing most of the time lately), carrying this:

I wish I had gotten a picture of Jerry with the balloon. Totally made my day.

Anyway, dinner was scrumptious. We had corn on the cob, salad, two kinds of chicken, and probably some other stuff that was also delicious. Meals are blending together. I do, however, know that last week, Rose made some kale in the oven that was to-die-for, and I’m not a huge kale fan. I went back for seconds on that.

Anyway, Joe made the dessert.

It was gluten free! And it had a layer of blackberry sauce in the middle. I love the calendula blossoms. They’re so beautiful. And… Joe also made homemade strawberry ice cream. It’s just not my birthday without strawberry something. That’s one of the best benefits of a late June birthday.

There were also presents, and I love them all! Rose and Jerry and Lauryn all got me wine, which is always a winner with me (at least until I go drinking too much of it all at once, that is). Dennis made me a very impressive wooden knife. It’s incredibly sharp! Beth gave me a bird house made specifically for the Eastern Bluebird, which I have always wanted to see my whole life but have never seen. I promptly put that up on the giant white pine as soon as we got to the property on Thursday. And a while ago, Joe texted me asking who/what my favorite Stephen King villain is. Now, the obvious answer is Leland Gaunt from Needful Things. I am haunted by his creepy fingers that are oddly the same length. It struck me as an odd question, but I answered it anyway, and here’s the reason he wanted to know:

I’ve started rereading Needful Things, by the way. I wish I could actually finish ONE book, ever. Instead, I partially read six or so at a time, which is kind of dumb. 

I really enjoyed my birthday party. It was one of the nicest birthdays I have ever had.

Then came my REAL birthday (June 30. Don’t forget.), and since it was my real birthday, I got to decide what tasks I wanted to do (within the realm of reasonable choices). I chose not to spend too much time in the sun, so I totally got to avoid strawberry picking and pea picking, which aren’t bad tasks at all, but they involve a lot of bending over, and a lot of product sampling! Instead I just kept myself in the cool, shady packing shed, bagging spinach, cleaning up, and setting out the boxes for packing for CSA drop off. Somehow we ended up one carrot bunch short, so I went and picked that. I really like picking carrots and scallions. Those are probably my favorites to pick, though none of it is actually bad.  I was thinking about what I was saying earlier about my “bad” day being like a six… in most of my past jobs, most days were nines most of the time. What I do now for a job is so cool.

After we finished getting the CSA shares ready, we had lunch and went up to the land. We decided to do laundry first, which was a great idea, because then it was done, and I took the time to sort it there, when I had space, so that it was easier to hang up when I got back. And it was easier to hang up, except for the mosquitoes, which, for that five-minute period in that hundred square foot spot, were absolutely horrendous. We had passed by the Corinth Creamery on our way to do laundry, and I wanted ice cream, and since it was my birthday we got to go back for it. It was an excellent choice! See, not only is it a cool, local business, but their delicious ice cream comes in a “baby” size, which is exactly the right size!! I seriously only want about a half cup serving of ice cream at maximum, and a third of a cup is even better, and this was probably about a third of a cup — very reasonably sized and very reasonably priced at $1.00. I got soft-serve vanilla with rainbow sprinkles — my favorite. 

Did I mention that we have curcubits growing in our compost? I’m not sure if they’re squash or cucumbers, but look how healthy they are!

It’s not even compost yet, and it’s producing vegetables!

I went for a walk, and I found this in the middle of the path.

I’m pretty sure it’s bear poop. And it has hair in it, so it’s carnivorous bear poop. Next time I decide to take a walk, I’m going to take a gun. That was some big bear poop.

I finally, finally, finally planted my poor honeysuckle, which was so tired of being in its tiny little pot. I had to wait for the final end of the woodshed to be put in, and we got that up today. We only bought one lattice for the honeysuckle, because we didn’t really have a plan, but now we’ve decided to get a second one and make the whole wall lattice.

I’m pretty sure that — no joke — there are little green buds at the base of the plant that weren’t there thirty seconds before I set it in the ground. It seems much happier here.

And this is progress on the woodshed.

All it needs now is the roof. We need to get the materials.

And, as I mentioned earlier, I put up my bluebird house. I can’t wait until it’s occupied, and hopefully there won’t be any squatters!

And now it’s July. How does that happen?

We had been talking forever about how, once we got up here, we were going to camp on the land every Saturday afternoon through Sunday, and this past weekend, we finally did it. I set up camp (no easy task in the wind — it was a very windy weekend) and got the fire ready, and Nate worked on the woodshed. We also put up the second piece of lattice for the honeysuckle. I love that one side of the woodshed is all lattice. On Saturday, we got all the roof timbers up. 

We stopped kind of early and went for a walk, and in one of the test pits that had been dug for our soil evaluation, we found this guy.

We got him out of the hole, and amazingly, he was still breathing, though it wasn't looking good, which is why he’s tucked into some ferns and put in a container. I ultimately ended up wrapping him in a rag to keep him as warm as possible, but alas, the patient did not survive the night, so Sunday morning, I laid him to rest. This time I dug the hole with a shovel. Sigh. Two funerals in one week!

We woke up so early Sunday morning! We found a diner that opened early for breakfast, so we went there and ate at a leisurely pace, but we still got to Home Depot half an hour before they opened. Once they opened, we got the tin roof for the woodshed, came back and got to work. It’s all finished, and Operation Warm for the Winter is now well underway. Once we had a woodshed, we put pallets down in it and started stacking firewood. We now have an awesome operation.

It’s not too far from the fire pit or the (eventual) house, and it’s got a chopping block for splitting. There is so much wood on the property that we should be plenty warm.

We came back nice and early again, which I really love. We took showers (also exciting), then took it easy.

And now it’s today. And the death theme continues. Today we (but more like “they”) slaughtered Mark Allen’s 22 chickens. I forced myself to stick around for the beginning of it, but I didn’t like it, not one bit (but I didn’t cry till afterward when no one but Nate was around). At least the meat birds are ugly and weird shaped. They have very round breasts and very thick thighs. They also seem to be lacking a lot of feathers in general, and they’re not the cleanest birds. They are very, very different from those gorgeous creatures who lay the eggs. Anyway, the slaughter is quite humane. Their suffering is minimized, and I’ve learned a new use for traffic cones — upside down ones with the tops cut off are perfect for sticking chickens in upside down so their heads stick out and their throats can be cut. The saddest part for me was waiting for them to bleed out. Once that’s done, they are decapitated. Then they are dipped in hot water (145 degrees or so, I think). It’s important that the temperature be right, because too cool and the feathers don’t loosen, and too hot and the skin begins to burn. Once they’ve been dipped and the feathers are loosened, they are plucked. The farm has a mechanical plucker. It’s a half of a 55-gallon drum with rubber spikes sticking into it to catch and pull off the wet feathers. So, the headless chicken gets put into the plucker, which gets turned on and spins around, kind of bouncing the chicken around, but when it comes out, it looks just about like a chicken from the store, except with feet. Next, the feet get cut off, and it gets gutted. Then it really looks like a chicken from the store. Then it’s packaged and refrigerated or frozen. I stayed for the processing of about four chickens from start to finish, and that was enough for me for now. I understand that this is the circle of life, and there was nothing inhumane about it, but I am an incredibly sensitive creature, and any pain for any animal is too much for me to bear. (See yesterday: I had a funeral for a field mouse that fell in a pit.) And these birds will be eaten and appreciated. I’m not going vegetarian; I just don’t want to be a part of the slaughter.

They say deaths come in threes, so with the duck, the vole and now the chickens, I am hoping we are done for a while.

So then I went and picked flowers. With Joe, Rose, Donna, Nate and me all picking, it took very little time at all, and all the bouquets were made by about 10:00. It being July 4th, we had the afternoon off, so we only had to occupy ourselves from 10:00 to noon. I weeded some lettuce for a bit, then I weeded and thinned some carrots for a bit, and then it was noon. We had lunch, and then I picked some more flowers and made some house bouquets.

And, then, Dear Maine, I started writing to you.  I realize that if I wrote to you more often, it would be less of an endeavor, but I’m me. I procrastinate. I let things pile up. I would like to change this about myself, but I probably won’t get around to that for a while.

So, just so you know, in a couple weeks, I will be doing a week long yoga teacher training through Baptiste, known as Level 2. It’s in the Catskills, at Menla, and I can’t wait to go back! (That’s where Level 1 was last August.) Then I’m going to Grassroots for a day, so you may not hear from me for a while, but I’ll try not to let it go this long again. You may even hear from me again before I leave. You never know. 

And, in an uncharacteristic move, I’m sending this to you without proofreading it, because I’m tired, and I want the information conveyed. Perhaps I will edit it later; perhaps I won’t. Perhaps I’m procrastinating.